DISC PhD-Thesis Award 2008 for Jan-Willem van Wingerden (DCSC)

Dr.ir. Jan-Willem van Wingerden, researcher at the Delft Center for Systems and Control, has been awarded the DISC Best PhD-Thesis Award for the best PhD thesis defended in 2008 in the Netherlands in the area of systems and control. The award is installed by DISC, the Dutch Graduate School in the field of systems theory and control engineering.

Jan-Willem received the award for the excellent quality of his PhD Thesis "Control of Wind Turbines with 'Smart' Rotors: Proof of Concept & LPV Subspace Identification" for which he obtained the doctoral degree "cum laude" at Delft University of Technology in November 2008. In his thesis new concepts have been developed for reducing the load on wind turbine blades by using dynamically controlled piezo actuators, while innovative concepts have been developed for the nonlinear dynamic characterization of the windturbine from experimental data. The PhD project was supervised by Professor Michel Verhaegen.

Jan-Willem received the Award, including a cheque of € 1000, from Prof.dr. Anton Stoorvogel, chairman of the DISC jury, during the 28th Benelux Meeting on Systems and Control, Spa, Belgium, on March 17, 2009.